Just a quick post about free Wi-Fi at Rydges Campbelltown. A friend who is wise in the way of hospitality once said that the only new thing to happen in the hotel business, ever, was the introduction of folding the toilet paper into a neat little triangle shape. Well, we beg to differ!

Hotels changed dramatically soon after Bruce Gyngell welcomed Australia to that new-fangled device called television in 1956. Hotels and motels offering FREE television were seen as very pro-active and modern… even if the broadcast was in black and white with just one commercial channel and the ABC – and you had to get out of your chair to change channels on the actual set. In those days broadcasting ceased late in the evening and recommenced late afternoon the next day. But at night – wow! Vince Edwards starring as Dr Ben Casey with Sam Jaffee doing the gravelly opening voiceover… “Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity…” Ahhh, you wouldn’t go out for quids!

Fast forward to 1975 and staples like Aunty Jack, the Paul Hogan Show, Number 96, Homicide and Matlock Police miraculously changed from black and white to colour! That was another innovation that hotels had to embrace quickly. Ahead to 1995 and Galaxy introduced pay television to Australia, which closed in 1998 but became the foundation for Foxtel. Again, hotels had to quickly adapt to meet the demand, along with those pay-for-view movie channels, some of them apparently quite ‘adult’.

Around this time, dial-up internet was becoming part of the Australian lifestyle but things like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and WiFi hadn’t even been thought of. When internet first found its way into hotel rooms it was agonisingly slow and painfully expensive.

Fast forward to, um, 2014 – and FREE WiFi is now available as part of the new look Rydges Campbelltown! Oh… and don’t worry, housekeeping still folds the toilet paper into a neat little triangle…